Anti-Matter: Because Peace & Complacency Are Overrated

Ah the nuclear bomb, what a wonderful thing that was, good times. The nuclear bomb was the perfect dooms day device. First of all there was nothing worse than a nuclear bomb which made it a hit with Hollywood. It seems like every action movie I've seen since the 1980's has featured a nuclear bomb because it's so terrifying, what with the ability to wipe out an entire civilization and all it's the perfect weapon of a well funded antagonist, or even a protagonist. Take the 2003 movie 'The Core' where director Jon Amiel conducts and all star casts of winners who, when the earths core stops spinning, decides the best way to start it again is by setting off a series of nuclear explosions in the core. Right, when in doubt, nuke it! The nuclear bomb was the perfect dooms day device because although it was the "sum of all fears" we could all sleep soundly knowing it could never happen because anyone who used a nuclear bomb was sure to wipe themselves out as well. We all learned this lesson because in 1983 a young Matthew Broderick hacked into NORAD and accidentally got the WOPR computer to begin initiation of WWIII in the movie 'War Games'. A quick thinking Matt gets WOPR to play tic-tac-toe which the computer magically uses to realize no one can win a nuclear war stating "the only winning move, is not to play".

But all that wonderment is now behind us thanks to a group of geniuses (and I say that in the most sarcastic way possible) from Livermore, California. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL for all you acronym lovers) have discovered a way to create anti-matter. For those of you who can't remember the term from your comic book loving days, anti-matter is most easily described as the opposite of matter. You can CLICK HERE if you're day is lacking serious bored0m for a more "scientific" description. The important thing to note is that it is believed that when anti-matter meets our well known friend matter (you know, buildings, air, us, the universe) the two will combine, canceling each other out and the two would cease to exist. Some of you may have missed that point so I will repeat it, cease to EXIST! Not blown up, not dead, not burning alive or even slowly rotting away in nuclear winter but ceasing to EXIST! And these winners thought it would be a good idea to create the stuff. Apparently this cracker jack group of think it all the way through to the end scientist heard about us sleeping soundly in our beds after watching 'Broken Arrow' and said "That just won't do"! Why? I can only posit that, to these guys at least, our every day squabbles just weren't getting the ratings.

From the South Park Episode 'Cancelled'.